The search landscape and how engines supplied results and paid links to other search engines has changed, as a once-chaotic environment of multiple sites has shaken out to one towering peak among them all.
Here’s a list of names you may or may not remember from the end of the 20th Century: Magellan. Northern Light. Hotbot. Inktomi. They and several other sites took a shot at making the World Wide Web a place where content could be actively found, instead of just discovered through word of mouth or through a newsgroup posting.
Much has changed since the end of 2000. AltaVista emerged from the crowd to be the place to go for search. It was at the top of the heap. And then one day, it wasn’t. That would be when Google emerged.
The history of search comes to life in the histogram provided on BruceClay.com. That draws from information compiled at times over the years into Search Engine Relationship Charts.
What was once a mixed up mishmash of search sites has been hammered flat over the past few years. Looking at the most recent chart at BruceClay.com shows just how ‘clean’ the world of search looks today.
You have Google supplying paid results to a half-dozen other search sites. Yahoo, MSN, and Ask along with Google supplying search results to the likes of AOL and Lycos. And that’s pretty much it.
If anyone needs to see how Google has won the battle for search supremacy in a nice pretty graph, this is the place to see it dramatically displayed in four-color glory. We’ll have to check back on it in seven years to see if Google still holds the center, or has been displaced.
Hat tip to Salesforce.
—
Add to 
Bookmark Murdok: 
